Auto-tracked events
Once the tracker is installed, three events are recorded automatically for every visitor — no triggers to define, no variables to map, nothing to enable. This is what powers the Overview and Engagement reports out of the box, before you send a single custom event.
page_view
Fires on the initial page load, and again on every subsequent navigation — including client-side (SPA) route changes, which the tracker detects by patching pushState/replaceState and listening for popstate and hashchange. You don't need to call anything from your router; this works the same whether your site is fully server-rendered or a single-page app.
Each page_view also carries the page's UTM parameters and referrer, which is how visits are assigned a channel.
engagement
Fires when a visitor leaves a page (tab switched away, page hidden, or navigates on), capturing:
duration_ms— active time spent on the page. Time in a backgrounded or hidden tab doesn't count.scroll_depth_pct— the deepest point scrolled, as a percentage of the page height.
To avoid noisy duplicate events, an engagement event only fires again for the same page view if there's genuinely new signal: at least 3 more seconds of active engagement, or a deeper scroll than previously recorded. Tabbing away and back repeatedly on the same page doesn't generate a new event every time.
This event powers bounce rate, average session duration and views per visit in the Overview report.
outbound_click
Fires when a visitor clicks a link to a different domain, with the destination URL attached. Use this to see which external links or partner sites your visitors follow, without instrumenting every link by hand.
What's not automatic
Page views, engagement and outbound clicks cover navigation and attention — they don't know about actions specific to your product or store. For everything else:
- Standard events — a catalogue of pre-defined events for common actions (
sign_up,login,search) and e-commerce (view_item,add_to_cart,purchase,refund). Send the ones that apply to your site. - Custom events — anything specific to your product, sent via the tracking API.
Related
- Custom events & goals — the full events overview, and how to turn an event into a conversion.
- Standard events catalogue — the pre-defined event names.
- Tracking API — how to send standard and custom events.